The Poweredge T110 That Didn't Want To Be A Bench Machine

I wanted to make this a dual-boot machine: Windows 7 and Server 2012.

After completing the Windows 7 install (to a single drive), I found that bare drives plugged into the remaining three onboard SATA ports weren't recognized by Windows as being removable.

Google being my friend, I found a utility that enabled Safe Removal of all except the system drive:
My thanks to Kazuyuki Nakayama, for devising HotSwap! downloadable at
http://mt-naka.com/hotswap/index_enu.htm

However, once Safe Removal was working, I discovered that "Safe Insertion" was not. Every time I hot-plugged a bare SATA drive into one of those three onbard SATA ports and powered it up, the server crashed with the System Event log showing Event ID 41 from Kernel-Power.

I had been powering up the bare SATA drives with power drawn from the server's PSU. I found that if I powered a bare drive from an independent power source, no problems.

Surely Dell would not have put a wimpy PSU in this entry-level server?

Surely Dell did exactly that!

When I swapped in an Antec 620M, all problems disappeared.

I wasn't sure that a standard ATX PSU would fit in the T110, because the T110  had prongs that engaged slots in the Dell PSU. Indeed, I had to flatten out the prongs in the T110 case. Until I flattened the prongs, the threaded holes in the Antec PSU didn't want to line up with the matching holes in the T110 case.

Now all I have to do is get Windows 12 installed on the second partition.